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Merle Travis
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Merle Robert Travis (November 29, 1917 – October 20, 1983) was an American country and western singer, songwriter, and musician born in Rosewood, Kentucky. His lyrics often discussed the exploitation of coal miners. Among his many well-known songs are "Sixteen Tons" and "Dark as a Dungeon". However, it is his masterful guitar playing and his interpretations of the rich musical traditions of his native Muhlenberg County, Kentucky that he is best known for today.
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Merle Robert Travis (November 29, 1917 – October 20, 1983) was an American country and western singer, songwriter, and musician born in Rosewood, Kentucky. His lyrics often discussed the exploitation of coal miners. Among his many well-known songs are "Sixteen Tons" and "Dark as a Dungeon". However, it is his masterful guitar playing and his interpretations of the rich musical traditions of his native Muhlenberg County, Kentucky that he is best known for today. "Travis picking", a syncopated style of finger picking, is named after him. He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970 and elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1977.
Early years
Travis was born and raised in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, the same coal mining county mentioned in the John Prine song "Paradise" and which would inspire many of Travis' own original songs. He became interested in the guitar early in life and originally played one made by his brother. Travis reportedly saved his money to buy a guitar that he had window-shopped for for some time.
Merle's guitar playing style was developed out of a native tradition of finger-picking in Western Kentucky. Among its early practitioners was the black country blues guitarist Arnold Shultz. Shultz taught his style to several local musicians, including Kennedy Jones, who passed it on to other guitarists, notably Mose Rager, a part-time barber and coal miner, and Ike Everly, the father of The Everly Brothers. Their thumb and index finger picking method created a solo style that blended lead lines picked by the finger and rhythmic bass patterns picked or strummed by the thumbpick. This technique captivated many guitarists in the region and provided the main inspiration to the young Travis. Travis acknowledged his debt to both Rager and Everly, and appears with Rager on the DVD Legends of Country Guitar (Vestapol, 2002).
At the age of 18, Travis performed "Tiger Rag" on a local radio amateur show in Evansville, Indiana, leading to offers of work with local bands. In 1937 Travis was hired by fiddler Clayton McMichen as guitarist in his Georgia Wildcats. He later joined the Drifting Pioneers, a Chicago-area gospel quartet that moved to WLW radio in Cincinnati, the major country music station north of Nashville. Travis's style amazed everyone at WLW and he became a popular member of their barn dance radio show the "Boone County Jamboree" when it began in 1938. He performed on various weekday programs, often working with other WLW acts including Louis Marshall "Grandpa" Jones, the Delmore Brothers, Hank Penny and Joe Maphis, all of whom became lifelong friends.
In 1943, he and Grandpa Jones recorded for Cincinnati used-record dealer Syd Nathan, who had founded a new label, King Records. Because WLW barred their staff musicians from recording, Travis and Jones used the pseudonym "The Sheppard Brothers." Their recording of "You'll be Lonesome Too" was the first to be released by King Records, subsequently known for its country recordings by the Delmore Brothers and Stanley Brothers as well as R&B legends Hank Ballard, Wynonie Harris and most notably James Brown.
When the Drifting Pioneers left radio station WLW, leaving a half-hour hole in the schedule that needed filling, Merle, Grandpa Jones and the Delmore Brothers formed a gospel group called The Brown's Ferry Four. Performing a repertoire of traditional white and black gospel songs, with Merle singing bass, they became one of the most popular country gospel groups of the time, recording nearly four dozen sides for the King label between 1946 and 1952. The Brown's Ferry Four has been called "possibly the best white gospel group ever".
During this period, Travis appeared in several soundies, an early form of music video intended for visual jukeboxes where customers could view as well as hear the popular performers of the day. His first soundie was "Night Train to Memphis" with the band Jimmy Wakely and his Oklahoma Cowboys and Girls, including Johnny Bond and Wesley Tuttle along with Colleen Summers (who later married Les Paul and became Mary Ford). His performance of "Why'd I Fall for Abner" with Carolina Cotton was chosen for inclusion in the PBS documentary Soundies, broadcast in 2007. Several years later he recorded a set of Snader Transcriptions, short music videos intended for local television stations needing "filler" programming. His performances included playful duets with his then-wife Judy Hayden as well as several songs from his 1947 album Folk Songs from the Hills (see below).
Career peak
In 1944, Travis left Cincinnati for Hollywood where his style became even more renowned as he worked in studio recording sessions, radio and live stage shows, and landed bit parts and singing roles in several B Westerns. He recorded for small labels there until 1946 when he was signed to Hollywood-based Capitol Records. Early hits like "Cincinnati Lou", "No Vacancy," "Divorce Me C.O.D., "Sweet Temptation," "So Round, So Firm, So Fully Packed", and "Three Times Seven", all his own compositions, gave him national prominence, although they did not all showcase the guitar work that Travis was renowned for amongst his peers. His design for a solid body electric guitar, built for him by Paul Bigsby with a single row of tuners, is thought to have inspired longtime Travis pal Leo Fender's design of the famous Broadcaster in 1950. The Travis-Bigsby guitar now resides in the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum.
In 1946, asked to record an album of folk songs, Travis combined traditional songs with several original compositions recalling his family's days working in the mines. The result was released as the 4-disk 78 rpm box set Folk Songs of the Hills. This album, featuring Travis accompanied only on his guitar, contains his two most enduring songs, both centered on the lives of coal miners: "Sixteen Tons" and "Dark as a Dungeon". "Sixteen Tons" (whose authorship has also been claimed by George S. Davis) became a #1 Billboard Country hit for Tennessee Ernie Ford in 1955 and has been recorded many times over the years. The darkly philosophical "Dark as a Dungeon", although never a hit single, became a folk standard during the 1960s folk revival, and has been covered by many artists including Johnny Cash in his best-selling concert album At Folsom Prison, by Dolly Parton on her 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs album and by Travis himself along with Doc Watson and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in the landmark 1972 album Will the Circle Be Unbroken. In spite of its initial lack of commercial success, Folk Songs of the Hills, with added tracks, has remained in print virtually ever since.
Travis was a popular radio performer throughout the 1940s and 1950s, and appeared on many country music television shows, co-hosting a show "Merle Travis and Company" with his wife June Hayden around 1953. He was a regular member of the Hollywood Barn dance broadcast over radio station KNX, Hollywood, and of the Town Hall Party, which was broadcast first as a radio show on KXLA out of Pasadena, CA and later as a TV series in 1953-1961. However, his personal life became increasingly troubled. A heavy drinker and at times desperately insecure despite his multitude of talents (including prose writing, taxidermy, cartooning and watch repair), he was involved in various violent incidents in California, and he married several times in the course of his life. He suffered from serious stage fright, though amazed fellow performers added that once onstage, he was an effective and even charismatic performer. In spite of his problems he was respected and admired by his friends and fellow musicians. Longtime Travis fan Doc Watson named his son Merle Watson, Glen Campbell's country music loving parents named him Glen Travis Campbell, and Travis admirer Chet Atkins named his daughter Merle Atkins, all in Merle Travis's honor.
Travis' string of chart-topping honky-tonk hits in the 1940s did not continue in the 1950s, despite regular radio appearances and the reverence of friends like Johnny Cash, Grandpa Jones and Hank Thompson, with whom he toured and recorded as lead guitarist (Thompson, who could pick Travis-style, even had Gibson design him a Super 400 hollow body electric guitar identical to the one Travis began using in 1952.) Travis continued recording for Capitol in the 1950s, broadening his repertoire to include new guitar instrumentals, blues and boogie numbers. His uptempo single "Merle's Boogie Woogie" showed him working with multi-part disc recording at the same time as Les Paul.
He found greater exposure after an appearance in the successful 1953 movie From Here to Eternity singing "Reenlistment Blues", and following the success of his friend Tennessee Ernie Ford's million-selling rendition of "Sixteen Tons" in 1955. His reputation as a folk-inspired singer-composer and guitarist grew after the appearance of the album The Merle Travis Guitar in 1956, the reissue of Folk Songs of the Hills with four additional tracks under the title Back Home in 1957, and Walkin' the Strings in 1960, the latter two of which won 5-star ratings from Rolling Stone Magazine. His career acquired a second wind during the American folk music revival in the late 1950s and early 1960s, leading to appearances at clubs, folk festivals and at Carnegie Hall as a guest of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs in 1962. In the mid 1960s he moved to Nashville and joined the Grand Ole Opry.
Guitar Style
Merle Travis is now widely acknowledged as one of the most influential American guitarists of the twentieth century. His unique guitar style inspired many guitarists who followed, most notably Chet Atkins, who first heard Travis's radio broadcasts on Cincinnati's WLW Boone County Jamboree in 1939 while living with his father in rural Georgia. Among the many other guitarists influenced by Travis are Scotty Moore, Earl Hooker and Marcel Dadi. Today, his son Thom Bresh continues playing in Travis's style on a custom-made Langejans Dualette.
Although his early tutors were among the first to use the thumb pick in guitar playing, freeing the fingers to pick melody, Travis's style, according to Chet Atkins, went on in musical directions "never dreamt about" by his predecessors. His trademark mature style incorporated elements from ragtime, blues, boogie, jazz and Western swing, and was marked by rich chord progressions, harmonics, slides and bends, and rapid changes of key. He could shift quickly from finger-picking to flatpicking in the midst of a number by gripping his thumb pick like a flat pick. In his hands, the guitar resembled a full band. As his son Thom Bresh puts it, on first hearing his father as a child "I thought it was just the coolest sound, because it sounded like a whole bunch of instruments coming from one guitar. In it, I heard rhythm parts, I heard melodies, I heard chords and all this wrapped up in one." Equally at home on acoustic and electric guitar, Travis was one of the first to exploit the full range of techniques and sonorities available on the electric guitar.
Though Chet Atkins was the most prominent guitarist to be inspired by Merle Travis, the two players' styles were significantly different. As Atkins explained, "While I play alternate bass strings which sounds more like a stride piano style, Merle played two bass strings simultaneously on the one and three beats, producing a more exciting solo rhythm, in my opinion. It was somewhat reminiscent of the great old black players. The resemblance was no coincidence; Travis himself acknowledged the influence of black guitarists such as Blind Blake, the foremost ragtime and blues guitarist of the late 1920s and early 1930s.
Travis's style is well explained and exemplified by Marcel Dadi on the DVD The Guitar of Merle Travis, which includes live video performances by Travis of classics such as "John Henry" and "Nine Pound Hammer" as well as transcriptions of Travis solos in tablature.
Late career and Legacy
After a career dip during which he struggled to overcome alcohol and drug abuse, Travis put his career back on track in the 1970s. He appeared frequently on such country music TV shows as the Porter Wagoner Show, the Johnny Cash Show, Austin City Limits, Grand Old Country, and Nashville Swing, and his featured performances on the 1972 Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album Will the Circle Be Unbroken introduced him to a new generation of roots music enthusiasts. His 1974 album of duets with Chet Atkins, The Atkins - Travis Traveling Show, won a Grammy award in the category "Best Country Instrumental," and a later album Travis Pickin received another nomination. In 1976, he contributed to the musical score of the Academy Award-winning documentary Harlan County, USA. Toward the end of the 70s he signed a new contract with the Los-Angeles based country music label CMH, which launched one of the most prolific recording periods in his career. The many titles that followed included new guitar solo albums, duets with Joe Maphis, a blues album, and a double LP tribute to the legendary country fiddler Clayton McMichen, with whom he had played in the 1930s.
In 1983, Travis died of a heart attack at his Tahlequah, Oklahoma home. His body was cremated and his ashes scattered around a memorial erected to him near Drakesboro, Kentucky.
Although many of his original LP albums are still unissued on CD, Travis' posthumous discography continues to grow, due in large part to the efforts of independent labels. A live concert album Merle Travis in Boston 1959 released by Rounder Records in 1993 documents Travis' singing and guitar work still at its peak. A major retrospective of Travis' work and career (Guitar Rags and a Too Fast Past, 5 CDs with an 80-page booklet) was produced by Bear Family Records in 1994, and includes much previously unreleased material. The Country Routes label has issued several transcriptions of his radio broadcasts of the 1940s and 1950s. Several recent DVDs published by Vestapol and Bear Family have collected many of his his music videos and television appearances. He was an honoree of the 2-hour television special An Evening of Country Greats: A Hall of Fame Celebration in 1996, and two classic Travis performances were included in the 4-part PBS television documentary American Roots Music in 2001, available in CD and DVD formats.
Discography
Albums
Folk Songs of the Hills, Capitol Records AD 50 (78 rpm box set, reissued as the LP Back Home in 1957) 1956 The Merle Travis Guitar, Capitol Records T-650 (LP) 1957 Back Home, Capitol Records T-891 (LP, reissued on CD as Folk Songs of the Hills in 1996) 1960 Walkin' the Strings, Capitol Records T-1391 (LP, reissued on CD in 1996) 1962 Travis, Capitol Records ST-1664 (LP) 1963 Songs of the Coal Mines, Capitol Records ST-1956 (LP) 1964 Merle Travis and Joe Maphis, Capitol Records ST-2102 (LP, reissued on CD) 1967 The Best of Merle Travis, Capitol SM-2662 (LP) 1967 Our Man from Kentucky, Hilltop JS-6040 (LP) 1968 Strictly Guitar, Capitol Records ST-2938 (LP, reissued on CD) 1969 Great Songs of the Delmore Brothers, Capitol Records ST-249 (with Johnny Bond) (LP) 1974 Merle's Boogie Woogie + 3, Rollin' Rock 031 (with Ray Campi) (45 rpm EP) 1974 The Atkins - Travis Traveling Show, RCA Victor APL1-0479 (with Chet Atkins) (LP, reissued on CD) 1976 Guitar Player, Shasta LP-523 (LP, reissued on CD) 1979 Country Guitar Giants, CMH 9017 (with Joe Maphis) (LP, reissued on CD) 1979 The Merle Travis Story: 24 Greatest Hits, CMH 9018 (LP, reissued in CD) 1980 Light Singin' and Heavy Pickin, CMH 6245 (LP) 1980 Guitar Standards, CMH 9024 (LP) 1981 Travis Pickin, CMH 6255 (LP) 1981 Rough, Rowdy and Blue, CMH 6262 (LP) 1982 Country Guitar Thunder (1977-1981), CMH R4901 (with Joe Maphis) (LP, reissued on CD) 1982 The Clayton McMichen Story, CHM 9028 (with Mac Wiseman) (double LP) 1982 Farm and Home Hour, CMH 9032 (with Grandpa Jones) (LP)
Posthumous albums (containing material not previously released)
- 1991 Merle Travis Unreleased Radio Transcriptions 1944-1949, Country Routes
- 1994 Guitar Rags and a Too Fast Past, Bear Family (5 CDs with 80-page booklet)
- 1995 Country Hoedown Shows & Films, Country Routes
- 1995 Unissued Radio Shows (1944-1948), Country Routes
- 1998 Turn Your Radio On (1944-1965), Country Routes
- 2002 The Very Best of Merle Travis, Varese Sarabande (The Shasta Masters)
- 2003 Boogie Woogie Cowboy 1944-1956, Country Routes
- 2003 In Boston 1959, Rounder Records
Selected compilations and reissues
- 1993 Folk Songs of the Hills: Back Home/Songs of the Coalminers, Bear Family (with 26-page booklet)
- 1995 Guitar Retrospective, CMH Records (accompanied by Joe Maphis or small band)
- 2000 The Best of Merle Travis: Sweet Temptation 1946-1953, Razor & Tie
- 2002 Sixteen Tons, ASV Living Era
- 2003 Hot Pickin, Proper Records (2 CDs with 15-page booklet)
- 2005 I Am a Pilgrim, Country Stars
- 2008 Merle Travis: The Definitive Collection, Delta Leisure Group (2 CDs)
- 2008 Legend of Merle Travis, Country Stars
Music DVDs
- 1994 Rare Performances 1946-1981, Vestapol (with 36 page booklet)
- 2002 Legends of Country Guitar, Vestapol (with Chet Atkins, Doc Watson and Mose Rager)
- 2003 More Rare Performances 1946-1981, Vestapol (with 21 page booklet)
- 2005 At Town Hall Party, Bear Family
Music Videos
1. Soundies Distributing Corporation (1946)
- Night Train to Memphis
- Silver Spurs
- Texas Home
- Old Chisholm Trail
- Catalogue Cowboy
- Why'd I Fall for Abner (with Carolina Cotton)
- No Vacancy (with the Bronco Busters and Betty Devere)
2. Snader Transcriptions (1951)
- Spoonin' Moon (with the Westerners and Judy Hayden)
- Too Much Sugar for a Dime (with the Westerners and Judy Hayden)
- I'm a Natural Born Gamblin' Man (with the Westerners)
- Petticoat Fever (with the Westerners)
- Sweet Temptation (with the Westerners)
- Nine Pound Hammer (with acoustic guitar)
- Lost John (with acoustic guitar)
- Muskrat (with acoustic guitar)
- John Henry (with acoustic guitar)
- Dark as a Dungeon (with acoustic guitar)
Film Appearances as Musical Performer
- 1944 The Old Texas Trail (U.K. title: Old Stagecoach Line)
- 1945 When the Bloom is on the Sage
- 1945 Montana Plains
- 1945 Why Did I Fall for Abner?
- 1945 Texas Home
- 1946 Roaring Rangers (U.K. title False Hero) (with the Bronco Busters)
- 1946 Lone Star Moonlight (U.K. title Amongst the Thieves) (with the Merle Travis Trio)
- 1946 Galloping Thunder (U.K. title On Boot Hill) (with the Bronco Busters)
- 1947 Old Chisholm Trail
- 1947 Silver Spurs
- 1951 Cyclone Fury (with the Bronco Busters)
- 1953 From Here to Eternity (vocal with acoustic guitar)
- 1966 That Tennessee Beat
Other Film Appearances
- 1961 Door-to-Door Maniac (U.S. video title Last Blood)
- 1962 The Night Rider (TV film)
- 1982 Honky Tonk Man
Original Film Music
Bibliography
- Travis, Merle. 1976. Foreword to Counry Roots: the Origins of Country Music by Douglas B. Green. New York : Hawthorn Books. ISBN 0801517818 : 0801517788 pbk
- Travis, Merle. 1979. "Recollections of Merle Travis: 1944-1955" (Parts 1 & 2). 1979. John Edwards Memorial Foundation Quarterly, Vol. XV, Nos. 54 and 55, pp. 107-114; 135-143.
- Travis, Merle. 1955. "The Saga of Sixteen Tons", United Mine Workers Journal, December 1, 1955.
- "Merle Travis on Home Ground", Interview with Hedy West in Sing Out, Vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 20-26.
- "Interview: Merle Travis Talking with Mark Humphrey" (Parts 1 to 4). 1981-1982. Old Time Music nos. 36-39, pp. 6-10; 20-24; 14-18; 22-25.
- Kienzle, Rich, 2004. "Merle Travis". In Paul Kingsbury, ed., The Encyclopedia of Country Music: the Ultimate Guide to the Music. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN-13: 9780195176087, ISBN-10: 0195176081
- Gold, Jude. 2006. "The secrets of Travis picking: Thom Bresh passes on the lessons of his legendary father, Merle Travis," Guitar Player, April 1, 2006.
- Eatherly, Pat Travis. 1987. In Search of My Father. Broadman Press. # ISBN-10: 0805457275, # ISBN-13: 978-0805457278
- Dicaire, David. 2007. The First Generation of Country Music Stars: Biographies of 50 Artists Born Before 1940. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. ISBN 0-7864-3021-4
- Wolfe, Charles K. 1996. Kentucky Country: Folk and Country Music of Kentucky. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN-10 0813108799, ISBN-13 9780813108797.
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